Jack Kingston: “It is too bad that in Washington you can always demagog out of fear and you can get reelected through race-baiting or…”

“It is too bad that in Washington you can always demagog out of fear and you can get reelected through race-baiting or scaring seniors or saying that children are going to be starved on the streets. It is an old tactic. Last year, before the gentleman was here, Haley Barbour, the chairman of the Republican Committee, offered $1 million to any Democrat or any person who could show where Medicare was being cut in the bill. Now do you not know the pressure that partisans were under to try to prove that the Republicans were, in fact, cutting Medicare? I mean they would have loved to collect that million dollars because in addition to being millionaires, they could have been heroes, huge heroes. Not one person was able to do that. Medicare was not cut. Yet unfortunately, in Washington we have a few demagogs who like to scare seniors and so forth, but the gentleman has raised a good point. Per recipient, it went from approximately 5,200 to about 7,100, and we are going to continue to work, and the doors are wide open in the discussions and the dialogs and the committee rooms. Democrats and Republicans, come on in, let us do what is responsible.”